wrote on 15/08/2011
at
00:00
I first saw a Marshall Baron painting aged 13 at a friends house. It seemed enormous to me at the time, I suppose it must have been 6'x 5', an abstract expressionist message scrawled dark and bright, where before there had only been stiff little naturalistic landscapes on dining room walls, elsewhere. It allowed me to see paint in a way I had never seen it before, and it opened neural pathways down which I have travelled for a long time since that first day. I never met him, perhaps because he was gone so young and I was much younger, but I saw more of his work, through Gallery Delta, the late Stephen Williams and various private collectors, as well as the National Gallery collection, acquired mostly I think during Frank MacKewen's time. Marshall inspired my aspirations to paint, and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, as my life has been made immeasurably richer by what his work taught me when I was young, and new so little. Thank you for the wonderful opportunity to revisit his work again now, when I am so far away from that place we call home.